I Know Your Secret by Ruth Heald

Author:Ruth Heald [Heald, Ruth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: urn:ean:9781838882235
Publisher: Bookouture
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Thirty

Danielle

Peter’s agreed to come with me to the hospital for my scan. He’s spoken to his boss and told him he has an urgent medical appointment so he could get time off work at the last minute. I’m so glad he’s prioritising this appointment, and I feel a kernel of hope forming inside me. Is he coming round to the idea of the baby? I don’t know what I’m going to do if I have to bring it up on my own. My mother will be living with me by then, but I’m not sure how involved I want her to be.

I haven’t been able to sleep lately, unable to get comfortable, or stop the thoughts swirling around my mind. And every time I roll over I feel a fresh wave of nausea. It doesn’t help that work has been really busy. I’m struggling to keep up with the pace. I feel like I have constant flu, but I dread telling work about the baby. I’ve seen how women who have had children have been forced out of the office, on spurious grounds of redundancy, when it’s really because they can no longer work late every night. I’m sure that as soon as I tell the partners at the law firm, I’ll start to be sidelined. I’m already worried about all the time I’ll miss for antenatal appointments.

I reach for Peter’s hand as we sit in the hospital waiting room. I really hope he’ll stand by me. I’m praying this baby is his. It has to be. I was so careful with the other man.

I watch the pregnant women being called in for their scans one by one. Some of them clutch their backs as they walk to the consulting room, struggling under the weight of their bumps. I can’t imagine my body expanding so much. I touch my stomach, which is still showing no signs of a bump. It’s hard to believe there’s really a baby growing inside me. The constant nausea is the only thing that reminds me I’m pregnant. But just months from now I will be as big as those women.

I’m called through and Peter and I walk into the small consulting room. The sonographer smiles as I climb up onto the bed. When she rubs cold gel on my belly, Peter reaches for my hand and squeezes it. It feels good to have him beside me. The probe touches my stomach and the sonographer presses harder than I expect.

There’s a rushing sound on the screen, but no picture, only darkness. The sonographer keeps moving the probe, pressing harder. I feel a stab of fear. What if the baby’s not there? Eventually she finds something. The flicker of a white line. And then more. Our baby.

‘There it is,’ she says, smiling.

‘Wow,’ Peter says, staring at the screen. And I can see that he’s forgotten his doubts entirely.

‘Can you tell when it was conceived?’ I ask quickly.

‘Let me just run some checks and take some measurements, and then I’ll have a better idea.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.